


Dancing Queen

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Dean Winchester Teaches Castiel How to Dance, Gen, Humor, Hunter Castiel (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:53:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24597055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dean gives Castiel a little dance lesson and inadvertedly proves himself to be the Dancing Queen.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Dancing Queen

When Dean springs from his chair into a celebratory happy dance, Castiel squints at him like he’s something foreign.

After days of research, tooth-pulling interviews, and lots of guts and blood, they’d finally “ganked the son of a bitch” that had been terrorizing some middle-of-nowhere Iowa town for decades. And the convenience store had pie. It was truly a time to celebrate.

Sam just shakes his head in exasperation and chucks an empty can at Dean’s arm when he chides him to “turn that frown upside down, Sammy” when he wasn’t frowning in the first place.

This is par for the course. Treasured, ephemeral normalcy. Aside from the dancing, which is a bit new, but welcome.

The odd thing is Castiel watching Dean dance like he’s taking mental notes on some alien mating ritual he could barely wrap his head around. Like Dean is all extraterrestrial appendages and cosmic grace.

Ironic phrasing, considering the angel in the room.

Eventually Dean flops back on the sofa and cracks open a beer, sighing contentedly at the prospect of doing absolutely nothing for the evening. Castiel finally tears his eyes away from Dean when the dancing ceases. Instead, he directs his attention to his own arm, which hangs at an odd angle from his shoulder in a way that no one who was born with a human arm would hold it. He studies it, working his fingers and then his elbow while observing every motion. It was stilted at first, awkward, but eventually he finds rhythm - a flat, irregular rhythm like that would accompany his own voice perfectly, but no other.

Sam and Dean watch him over their respective beverages, with the occasional raised-brow glance at each other that says “yes, yes this is indeed happening.”

Soon Castiel remembers that he has legs, and hips, and a head, and a neck, and adds those into the choreography as well. If you could even call the bastard child of Dean’s dance, the robot, and a one-legged grasshopper’s jumping choreography. But he’s doing it and he’s determined. And, oh boy, is he absolutely shameless.

He even begins to hum a strange little tune along with the spasms he’s trying to pass for dance.

It gets to the point that Dean can no longer contain the jet of laughter that spews through his nose - which, granted, does not take very long. On a spontaneous light bulb moment, he flings himself off the couch and toward his dancing friend.

Sam sits up a little more to get a better view of the two. He considers digging his phone out of where it had fallen between the couch cushions, but shooting a video, after a long-ass hunt, is too much work.

“Cas, buddy,” Dean pauses to wheeze out another laugh, “come on, you call that dancing?” He slaps Castiel playfully on the shoulder, which freezes him mid-dance move.

Castiel looks at Dean with that characteristic perplexed blankness, “I’m moving my appendages rhythmically. That is the definition of dance, right?”

“That’s not rhythm” he says pointedly, “I’ll show you rhythm.”

Dean shoots Sam a look: the look of imminent nonsense at not-Dean’s expense. This look would usually alarm Sam if he was the reason for it, but today he instead gets to play the role of amused spectator, which he is very much happy to do now that he’s done with stabbing and salting and burning.

“Okay, Cas, I’m gonna give you a dance lesson.”

Sam snorts.

Castiel just accepts this and readies his limbs at that awkward angle again, like he’s picking up drumsticks for the first time, and those drumsticks were designed for children.

“You are aware that I lack grace of movement in this vessel? Its movements are a mechanism completely unlike that of my true form.”

There’s an air of sheepishness in there somewhere, but Dean is too distracted to detect it.

“Don’t worry about that,” Another pat on the shoulder. “I’m going to teach you everything I know, and believe me - I know how to move.” Dean punctuates this with a little groove of the hips and the arms, which earns a mouth-vomit noise from Sam.

Castiel just continues to squint at him. He has a variety of squints all stashed away in that trenchcoat of his instead of actual facial expressions. This one is a combination of frankly interested in humanity’s quirks, and exasperation at the obviousness of what was just said.

“I assume you know how to move. That is the point of this lesson.”

Dean stands in front of Castiel and goes to position the angel’s arms, stopping his hands just before touching him as if to ask permission.

Castiel nods, and Dean takes the angel’s shoulders and elbows and places them at a more human angle, creating the illusion that Castiel had simply stood there like a normal human being in the first place.

Then he steps back, now directly in front of the angel with a few paces in between. 

“Wait- Sam, put on a song. A good song.”

Sam promptly digs his phone out of the couch cushions and pulls up Dancing Queen without missing a beat, letting the disco pop reverberate through the room.

Dean immediately objects, grumbling something about having said “a good song,” but Castiel chimes in that he likes it, and so Dean relents, with a satisfied snicker from Sam for good measure.

“Alright,” Dean says, with convincingly feigned defeat, “mirror me.” 

Dean begins swaying to the music, keeping his motions simple and relatively slow so that Castiel can follow. As the music plays and the Swedish-accented vocals swell, Dean moves with it, though if you asked him later he was absolutely not swinging and swaying to ABBA with all his heart. He bobs his head and twists his hips, arms accenting the rhythmic movements of the rest of his body. 

Castiel, meanwhile, tries with all his angelic might to stumble along as closely as possible with Dean’s dance. While Dean’s was fluid and loose, however, Castiel’s was stilted and came in concrete jolts, all robotic programming rather than natural rhythm. Castiel flinches and wiggles. Dean flows and, for a moment, embodies the music. 

Dean Winchester, as much as he would insist the contrary, is absolutely the Dancing Queen.

When the music stops, Dean fails to register that fact, continuing like it’s gone on loop in his head. It probably has.

Sam stifles a laugh behind his fist. This is too good.

Castiel carefully reaches out and catches Dean’s arm before it slaps him clear across the face. For an infinitesimal moment Dean goes all ohshitohshitohshit eyes until he shoves it all behind six feet of strained nonchalance.

“So,” he begins, totally not-awkwardly, “You, uh, you think you got the whole human limbs thing down now?”

Castiel looks at Sam for guidance. If by guidance he means ugly inhaling noises, Sam provides enough of it for the world.

“I believe my abilities lie in utilizing my spiritual grace rather than any human notion of physical grace,” then his eyes soften, much too earnest for a silly little dance lesson, “But thank you anyway, Dean.”

Dean feels the question poking at the back of his mind like an incessant child before finally allowing it through the proud little grin that forces its way onto his face,  
“Would you say I’ve got that...physical notion of human grace?”

Judging by the howling laughter coming from the couch, Castiel would not find guidance from the other Winchester this time, either. He answers with that extraterrestrial frankness that knew no sense of propriety or mercy,

“You certainly understand how to operate a human vessel, but perhaps not as optimally as others. Still,” the ghost of a smile, which on Castiel was a full-faced grin, “I appreciate the lesson. I feel it enhanced my understanding of the human vessel and your musical preference.”

“Musical preference my ass.”

Dean flops back on the couch, caught in a superposition of success and defeat, while Castiel experiments with wiggling his hips.

“I do not,” Dean emphasizes this by throwing Sam’s phone down onto the couch, “like ABBA.”

Throwing the phone onto the couch counterproductively hit the “play” button, which sent Dancing Queen again blaring from the device’s speakers. Castiel, limbs still growing accustomed to human notions of rhythm, attempts the Travolta.

Dean shoves his face into a pillow as Sam somehow shouts the lyrics with no shame and even less talent. 

_This is what I get for celebrating anything_ , Dean thinks. 


End file.
